Comprehensive schools ‘can fail brightest pupils’

12 April 2012

A key architect of Britain's comprehensive schools admitted today that they may fail some of

Baroness Williams, 79, who extended the system as education secretary under Labour in the Seventies, said there was "tension" between the egalitarian principles of comprehensives and the service they give to brighter pupils.

Speaking on Radio 4 documentary A Good School, she said: "That is why an awful lot of people send their children to private schools."

But the Liberal Democrat peer defended the system as benefiting the majority of children who did not go to grammar schools.

She also said "grade inflation" was taking place in the exam system and claimed over-reliance on the internet had exacerbated the problem, as pupils increasingly rely on it for coursework.

"An assiduous youngster can learn a lot about the kind of answers an examiner likes. What you're getting is a certain amount of high-class learning by rote. It's unfortunate and it's not what education should be about," she said.

The Government insists there has been no decrease in the quality of exam results.

Meanwhile, Education Secretary Ed Balls and Conservative schools spokesman Michael Gove clashed over the dwindling teaching of Latin.

Mr Balls said: "Headteachers often point me to dance tech and sport as a way of motivating pupils. No one has ever taken me to a Latin lesson to make the same point. Very few parents are pushing for it, very few pupils want to study it."

But Mr Gove responded: "Studying an academic subject in depth is a training for the mind, knowledge as a good in its own right is what we want to disseminate more widely."

A Good School, presented by Anne McElvoy, is on the Radio 4 website.

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